I purchased the saw from ToolCrib and they said to expect delivery in 8 business days. The saw was delivered right on time. No problems with the delivery and the three boxes were in good shape. No charge for delivery (total was > $500) and no sales tax.

The Saw:

The Grand Edition is a white Series 2000 model. The saw comes with a solid steel left extension wing, right 32" extension table board with support legs, 30" Unifence, mitre gauge, carbide saw blade, and two arbor wrenches. The plastic blade guard has a notch in it so that the guard stays up when changing blades. The stand has a support piece of sheet metal angled towards the bottom back of the saw and is advertised as a dust chute. Also part of the sales pitch of the "new and improved" stand is the fence and mitre gauge holders. The mitre gauge holder is nothing but a hole in the front of the stand to slide it into. The fence holder may be appropriate for a standard fence, while the Unifence seems too big for it. There's a place to hang the two arbor wrenches as well. I also believe this saw is the replacement for the 34-445Z. Regardless of the "36-" designation, this is not a Contractors II.

Assembly & Setup:

Since this was my first tablesaw I was expecting assembly to be difficult. I inventoried all the parts and everything seemed to be there. Turned out I was short two small nuts. (I did have an extra flat part about 10 inches in diameter and had sharp things all along the edge. Looked dangerous to me so I threw it out.) The most confusing part of the assembly was the three instruction manuals. One for the basic saw (36-444), another for the Unifence, and another one covering some Grand Edition specifics which were covered in the other two anyway. At one time I had all three manuals open along with the screw and bolt identification sheets. Wasn't much of a problem until I started to assemble the Unifence. Each manual had something different, but it worked it out. Attaching the motor took a couple of tries. The instructions should coordinate the pulley alignments with the checking of the motor height staying below table level at 45 degrees. Going slow and rechecking things, assembly took about 8 hours, including a couple of hours carefully checking calibrations, and about 20 minutes looking for the blade I threw out (the dangerous round thing I mentioned.) The fence was the only thing needing minor adjustments. Getting help from a friend to put the saw on the base is a must. The rest can be done by yourself. Overall, the saw was very easy to assemble.

Operation:

I began by counting my fingers. Turning it on for the first time I was expecting a loud noise but was pleasantly surprised at how quiet it was. The saw literally hummed. In comparison to my bandsaw there was very little vibration. My first cut was a ¾" piece of pine. How smooth and square it is! My second attempt was a 2'x3' sheet of plywood. When I was experimenting to see how to handle the sheet over the table it started to stick on something. Upon closer inspection I noticed the edges of the table board were not flush and had some glue residue. Trimming the edges with a razor blade worked out nicely. When raising and lowering the blade there is a momentary pause as if the gears had a missing tooth. Checked it out and everything seemed fine.